I read my first Asterix comic sometime in the mid to late 1970’s. I remember this (I remember who had it and where I read it) because it really made an impression on me. Here was a comic that was the perfect cross between the simple (in story and in art) Disney and Archie comics that my grandparents had lying around for their grandkids to read, and the heavy, detailed superhero comics that my friends and I used to read. Asterix was funny, smart, and the main characters were superhero strong and they were Gauls (I had no idea what the heck that meant) who were fighting against the Romans in 50 B.C. (Now that I understood.) There was plenty of humor that teen-me picked up on, and as I read through this, most of that humor hasn’t changed and yet it still made me chuckle.

Publisher Orion is putting out an Omnibus edition of the Asterix comics. This book, Omnibus #1, combines the first three issues of the Asterix comics: Asterix the Gaul, Asterix and the Golden Sickle, and Asterix and the Goths. These three books really give the reader everything one needs to know about Asterix, the character, his powers, his sense of humor, and his friends.

Right in the first book we learn that Asterix’s power comes from a potion made by his druid friend, and that it will wear off from time to time. We also learn that Asterix’s friend, Obelisk, a big, simple-minded oaf with a good heart and very devoted to his friend, is permanently strong because he had fallen into a vat of the druid’s elixir when he was a child. But if he takes a drink of the potion now it would have a dangerous, negative effect on him. We also learn about the dislike of the Romans and how Asterix and his friends are the last hold-outs against the mighty Roman army. Of course, that Roman army are Keystone Kops, B.C. style.

This is not only fun nostalgia, but just good entertainment. If you’ve never read an Asterix comic, this is the perfect place to start and you’ll find it addicting and want to read more, which is good, because we should all take time out to laugh once in awhile.

Looking for a good book? Asterix Omnibus Vol. 1 is a graphic novel reprinting some very entertaining comics. You should check it out.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Jennifer Ackerman is a science writer of some renown. One only needs to look at her bibliography to see that she understands researching and writing about a few different topics, but birds being one of the more common subjects for her. Here the specific focus is bird intelligence.

Ackerman provides examples, mostly current, some historical, of unusual bird behavior that suggests or highlights an intelligence that we’ve often over-looked, not recognized, or written off as some strange instinctual behavior. All of these are quite remarkable and Ackerman’s presentation really makes a strong case for “bird brain” to be a compliment rather than an insult (though I suspect the idiom will never catch on).

There are enough personal comments throughout to keep this from being a dry dissertation. These are the moments which have me agreeing with her as she expresses some awe. For instance:

I know that navigating by celestial cues is not necessarily a sign of high intellect. After all, dung beetles—best known for sculpting little balls of animal feces that they later eat—use light from the Milky Way to orient themselves at night. Still, it seems a marvel to me that birds can glean a north-south orientation by learning the rotational patterns of stars.

A marvel indeed!

What really struck me is that we humans don’t really give enough credit for intelligence in other species. We anthropomorphize and then, when a creature doesn’t behave or react or communicate the way we expect them to (like humans) we assume there is a lack of intelligence. It seems pretty clear, reading Ackerman’s work here, that there might be a good deal of ‘intelligence’ (cognizant thinking?) going on.

Will more studies be done? I’m sure there are many studies being done all the time, but without a ‘bestseller voice’ such as Jennifer Ackerman’s, most of us will probably miss out on the news, which is too bad, because this has really piqued my interest.

Looking for a good book? The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman is a quite fascinating look at new studies showing that our ‘bird brained’ feathered friends just might be a lot more intelligent than we’ve previously suspected.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Megan Sawyer is working at the idyllic Washington Acres in Winsome, Pennsylvania. But her perfect summer, which includes some quality time with the handsome Dr. Finn, is about to go downhill rapidly when Megan learns that her father (who’s never been too reliable) and his new wife, Sylvia, plan to stay at a retreat center the next town over.

Sylvia has plans to open up a specialty boutique and is trying to secure the artwork of an artist whose work is showing at the retreat center. The meeting between Sylvia and the artist doesn’t go well and shortly after their volatile encounter the artist, Thana Moore is found murdered. Sylvia is the prime suspect. Megan will investigate, but she also has ties to Thana … at one time, Thana and Megan were best of friends. Now as Megan dives into solving this case, she learns a lot about her friend since their friendship waned, but more importantly, that no one in the region is safe until something (or someone) sinister is taken down.

For the most part, I’ve really liked the different mystery series’ that I’ve read from publisher Henery Press. However, I have selected the series’ I’ve wanted to read. Wanting to branch out a bit, I thought I’d give this title a try.

Mostly likely it was the fact that I was coming blind into the 4th book in a series, but there was very little here that held any appeal for me. The characters never stood out as sharp and unique individuals. Instead, I felt that these were just characters created to move a story forward.

It could also be that this book was a little more ‘cozy’ than many of the mysteries that I’ve enjoyed. I’m typically not a fan of the cozy mystery genre, but there are some that I enjoy a lot. This one just never caught my attention and I struggled to read it.

Looking for a good book? Rooted in Deceit by Wendy Tyson is a cozy mystery that never takes off. It’s possible that you really need to read the entire series to care about the characters.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

There are people (and creatures) in the known universe who are bent on bringing about chaos. The most dangerous of these are cultists known as The Olde Fellowes and The Esoteric Order of Dagon who, with supernatural help, will do whatever they can to disrupt order. To combat this, a covert group of professionals known as the Human Protection League (HPL) – affectionately dubbed “The Lovecraft Squad” – was created. Think of them as sort of an ‘X-Files” team, but with more subtlety and power.

The battle has not been going well and the HPL team have collected at a new headquarters to regroup. The cultists are preparing the way for ancient, powerful gods to be resurrected and freed from imprisonment and restore their power. An Eldritch War is brewing and the best hope that the HPL have just might be a man out of his own time.

The book is a collection of short stories but it is put together as if it were a larger, cohesive novel with a lot of sub-plots. It’s kind of a strange arrangement. If you don’t know that these are short stories – there is no table of contents and while each chapter has a title, there is no author associated with it – then you might get really confused (as I was when I first read the previous book in the series).

The authors behind these stories are all talented. There weren’t any stories/chapters that I did not enjoy. One story definitely stood out as being exceptionally powerful – ‘The Haunters of the Dark Affair” by Steve Rasnic Tem. This story felt very current and I definitely felt as though I were invested in what was happening. It was quite moving.

The darkness of the impending Eldritch War and the supernatural aspects of the ancient, dark gods certainly suggests that this is not a book for everyone, but if you pause to look at this book because the word ‘Lovecraft’ caught your eye, then I highly recommend it. “The Story So Far…” at the start will get you caught up with all you need to know to start reading immediately.

This book contains the following (authors listed are those credited with being the copyright holders at the back of the book):

All the different supernatural nations have been called together to discuss a treaty. Queen Mab is holding a casual soiree in advance of the peace talks and Chicago’s only wizard, Harry Dresden, has been called in to work security. Security. Among a large group of supernaturally strong and powerful beings who historically haven’t gotten along. Yeah. Who wants a job like that? Sometimes it’s not a choice, though. Harry has a job to do and he will work it to the best of his ability, even if that means rubbing a few folk the wrong way.

But there is one thing that trumps duty, even for Harry Dresden … family. Harry’s family is no Hallmark Movie family, but he’ll fight against hell itself to protect his family – and it just might come to that.

Reading a new Harry Dresden book is like seeing your best friend from your school days after having lost touch for the past couple of decades. It’s comfortable, and getting familiar with one another again is part of the fun. Of course it doesn’t take long to remember why we like Harry Dresden so much. The action heats up quickly and the Dresden charm … or is that sarcasm? … rolls off the page early on. We also get the family/duty conflict right on the first page and we know we’re in for one incredible ride.

We meet a large cast of characters – there’s a meeting of every Supernatural nation remember – and Harry will battle against some of the most vicious beasts he’s ever faced. And that just gets our feet wet as we wade into this book. There is SO much going on here that it would be difficult to imagine it could possibly be contained in one 350 page book. Oh yeah… it can’t. There’s a bit of a cliff-hanger here and the expectation is that things are only going to get worse. I can’t tell you exactly why because it would give away too much of the fun in reading this, but if you already know The Dresden Files you can trust that this is likely bigger and badder and better than anything Harry’s faced before.

The sub-plot to the larger story takes the main focus of this book, while at the same time, Butcher is setting up the over-arcing story. You’ll definitely want to pay attention here – don’t let the melee’s distract you!

My only regret is that I didn’t go back and re-read some of the books just prior to this. There are some things happening here, and people popping in, that I only tangentially remember. If you are waiting to read this, brush up on your Dresden Files – it will only enhance your enjoyment here.

Looking for a good book? Harry Dresden is back, in Peace Talks by Jim Butcher, and it’s a big win for all his fans. But Harry’s going to have to work like never before if he’s hoping to score a big win. Everything we love about the Dresden Files is here – on steroids.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve read more than a few westerns and generally enjoy the genre when I’m looking for something light and quick (‘light’ meaning not a lot of subplots and characters that need to be followed with an organizer). Yet, to my memory, I’ve never read a Max Brand book. Borrowing this book from my library, I decided to change that.

Joe May is a tall, lanky sixteen year old, determined to set out on his own and make his own way and become his own boss on his own plot of Alaskan land. But as we meet him, he hasn’t eaten in a day and a half and he’s feeling pretty desperate when he wanders into bar. There, he meets up with Joe Massey in order to do a job. Joe is a respected (and feared) man in the area, and working for Massey immediately gives Joe some credibility. Massey takes a liking to the boy and keeps him on, enlisting his help in getting his dog back from Massey’s sworn enemy, Arnie Calmont.

The dog, faithful to a fault to Massey, once belonged to Calmont. And Calmont and Massey were once friends and partners and known all over the Yukon. Now the dog, known as Alec the Great, is at the center of their rivalry. Even the woman who puts herself up for auction, Marjorie, can’t compete with the company of a faithful dog.

My story synopsis doesn’t really do this book justice. This is really a fun YA western story. It’s a coming-of-age story for Joe May, even though it’s Massey and Alec the Great, and Calmont to some degree, who provide the action of the story. But we see the story through Joe’s eyes and what he learns from it. What he (and we) learn is that a faithful companion, whether or human or canine (and most likely it’s canine) is important to a man on his own (of course you’re not really on your own if you have a companion).

The book moves along swiftly, and the action is well told. This struck me a lot as similar to books such as The Call of the Wild but from a different perspective. Think A Boy and His Dog but in the historical Yukon rather than the apocalyptic desert.

I enjoyed this and am looking forward to reading more Max Brand, wondering if they are all YA targeted or if some are a little ‘harder’ western.

Looking for a good book? Sixteen in Nome by Max Brand is a ‘northern’ (as opposed to ‘western’) YA book that is adventurous and exciting and a quick read.

Zoe Faust finally has her life under control. It’s only taken a century or two. An alchemist, living in the Portland, Oregon area, with a gargoyle friend and border/chef, Dorian, she’s decided to search for her old mentor, Nicholas Flamel. Zoe believes that a local artist has the secret to finding Flamel, in a painting. But when the artist is murdered and the painting goes missing, Zoe and Dorian investigate and discover a world of art forgeries and alchemy that she never knew existed.

I have really come to like Pandian’s prose and story-telling. This, for me, is the best of the four book Accidental Alchemist series.

I admit to having a special affinity for art-themed stories, and with this book author Pandian does a remarkably good job of not only incorporating art into the story, but making it integral to the plot and bringing something new to reading journey. New? Yes. Pandian combines alchemy with art in a very unique manner.

Having Zoe see a painting of a man she strongly believes is Flamel, who, to her knowledge never sat for a painting because, as he taught her, it wasn’t good to be recognized as someone who does not age. So finding a portrait of him and trying to track him down, becomes her first mystery. Trying to understand why the artist of the painting – a contemporary of today – would be killed by drinking his paints is Zoe’s second mystery. The mysteries are intertwined, and there are some surprises along the way.

Pandian creates very real characters – not an easy feat considering some immortal (or nearly), some are gargoyles, and some are strongly rooted in the world we commonly know. These ‘real’ people are a big reason that the stories work so well, but Pandian’s plotting skills have grown remarkably over the past few years. This story is quite engrossing and I got really caught up in it. Even the jumping back and forth between centuries didn’t both me (often it does) as these moment were well placed and really did bring forth more valuable information for the story.

You don’t need to read the previous three books in the series to understand or enjoy this book, but why would’t you?

Looking for a good book? The Alchemist’s Illusion by Gigi Pandian, is the best of the four book Accidental Alchemist series, and for anyone interested in a strong mystery with a well-developed supernatural bent, this is definitely the book to read.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

If you’ve seen the new Archie Comics series on Netflix (or some other streaming service) you know that the new Archie and Riverdale gang are almost nothing like the Archie, Jughead, Betty, and Veronica that most of us grew up with.

Someone is killing the citizens of Riverdale. Dilton Doily is one of the first to die and when Jughead wakes up the following morning, with blood on his clothes and a strange dream about meeting Dilton in the graveyard the night he was killed, Jughead has a bad feeling that he just might be the cause.

As tensions rise, Archie’s worried about his friend Betty who has said some suspicious things, and disappears at odd hours. When he follows her one night he learns that Betty is a descendant of a long line of werewolf hunters. Betty’s aunt (and trainer) thinks that Archie isn’t worth training (to fight werewolves) but Betty convinces her that the extra help would prove useful, and so Archie gets some important lessons in the history and anthropology of werewolves, as well as some serious training on how to combat them. But if Archie’s best friend, Jughead, turns out to be the Riverdale monster, will he be able to put him down?

As I enjoy a good horror novel, and paranormal creatures of all sorts (vampires, werewolves, mermaids, etc) are often fun to read about, I really did enjoy this book. It was certainly an added treat that I was familiar with both the classic Archie gang as well as the newer series. I was surprised to see regular characters (Dilton, as well as a few others – but I won’t say who they are) killed off and I wonder how that will play out in future books in the series (this is considered book #1 in the Archie horror series). This feels like a true stand-alone book. Characters and situations that were fun to read about once don’t strike me as something sustainable.

This is targeted toward the YA market, but definitely the more mature readers. This type of horror is much more graphic than, say, the old Goosebumps series.

Looking for a good book? A Werewolf in Riverdale by Caleb Roehrig is the first book in the Archie Horror book series. It’s gritty and complicated, but fun for those who enjoy the horror genre.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

Aaron Sheridan is angry and upset. A shuttle that he was piloting crashed and everyone in his family (except him) died. Now with a death wish, he signs up for Fleet service, expecting to be shipped off to the front line of the Rim War. Instead, he is sent to Corinth Station on Mars – an elite command school. He immediately stands up for a poor kid who is being picked on by one of the most feared cadets in the school, Caelus Erik, which immediately puts a target on his own back by Erik and his goons. But Sheridan is not the push-over that so many of the other young recruits are.

Aaron isn’t too happy with the way things are run and are or are not being monitored by the administrators. Are the inmates running this asylum? But with each passing day he learns new things and he just doesn’t know who to trust or what action to take. But when a discovery is made that suggests he’s unwittingly a part of a devious plot, he knows it’s time to take action.

This is a quite dense book. Nearly 500 pages with a lot of information being presented. Much of this reminded me of when I read Pierce Brown’s Red Rising. We have the reluctant hero stepping up and pulling people together. We have an authoritative over-seeing body that is present mostly theoretically at this time, though when it does step in, it asserts its hand. We even have a caste system recognized often by color (here it is uniform color).

What we don’t have is a cohesive story.

I felt like 90% of this book was character set-up. We go back and forth – who do we trust, who do we not trust, who do we trust. And who is really in charge here and are they controlling as much as the cadets think, or do they have more ‘free will’ than they suspect?

There’s plenty of action, as Aaron steps up and proves himself over and over, in combat and in skills tests, but the plot action only comes at the very end of the book and I wondered … where did this come from? It was frustrating to change stories at the end of the book (which is what it felt like, even if the story at the end was hinted at earlier, it was never very present).

I actually really liked the characters and the development of the characters and that really kept me reading. But the major plot twist, which ends in a cliff-hanger (to sell the next book) just comes out of left field and didn’t feel connected to the rest of the book, so it ended as a real let-down.

Looking for a good book? Lakes of Mars by Merritt Graves has some nice character development but lacks a tight story that would want me to read more.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Kafka in Wonderland. That’s what I kept imagining as I read through this fantastic book.

Detective John Nyquist is getting clues about his father who disappeared over 20 years ago. He goes to visit the quaint but odd little village of Hoxley-on-Hale. Here the villagers honor 360 different saints, 360 days a year. For five days the villagers arefree to celebrate how they choose. These celebrations are extreme and the villagers follow them, er, religiously. On one day they may all wear masks, on another day they don’t speak, and still another they complete only half of EVERYthing (speech, actions, etc), and another still where everyone is addressed as either Alice or Edward. For a visitor looking for information, as Nyquist is, this is all very confusing and confounding. One might think that on one of those five ‘free’ days, it might be easier to commune with the villagers, but the citizens generally feel lost and uncertain on those days.

Nyquist has a very challenging time just trying to uncover who has been sending him messages about his father and what might have happened to his father and it only gets more complicated as there are some unusual murders occurring and he is clearly the most capable of detectives to look into this.

Really, all I can say to this is: Wow.

Jeff Noon is so incredibly creative. He writes some of the most amazing speculative fiction I have ever read. The story here is truly awesome, but it’s the journey, it’s Jeff Noon’s writing that transforms this from a simple good book to an experience.

It’s not just the wildly unusual/creative world surrounding Nyquist that is so wonderful here, it’s following Nyquist, seeing this world through his eyes, and trying to make some sense of what is happening. This series really is like Alice wandering through Wonderland. We have the one person with whom we identify – someone more-or-less like us, thrown into extremely unsettling situations and trying to navigate through it, with a goal in mind.

Looking for a good book? Creeping Jenny by Jeff Noon is the third book in the John Nyquist series and is astoundingly good. If you are extremely adverse to feeling disoriented, you might want to avoid this book. But if you enjoy wading through a Wonderland, or the varied realities in a Philip K. Dick novel, then settle yourself in and open this book.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.